


Fall, Winter, Spring

by HenryMercury



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agent Barnes, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/F, M/M, POV Multiple, Sergeant Carter - Freeform, The Red Room, Winter Soldier Peggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Peggy have been best friends since they were kids. When Steve joins the army, he meets the handsome Agent Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall, Winter, Spring

Peggy finds Steve in an alleyway near the cinema, face smeared with his own blood.

“Excuse me,” Peggy says politely. The stocky boy who has been beating Steve up turns around, no doubt surprised to hear a voice like Peggy’s in a place like this.

She punches him in the face.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size,” she recommends, before shoving him towards the street. He does at least have the good sense to leave while he still can.

“Crazy bitch!” he calls out as he goes. Peggy pays him no mind; she’s been called plenty worse.

She’s wiping off her knuckles on her brand new army uniform before she can think better of it.

“You didn’t have to do that, Pegs,” Steve says, sagging against her as she helps him up.

But Peggy did have to, has needed to step in and help Steve ever since they were children and Steve stepped in to tell the tallest boy in their grade that if Peggy said she didn’t like the way he was talking to her, then he should damn well respect it and leave her alone. Steve, who was even tinier then than he is now, had earned himself a bloody nose for his trouble. Peggy had seen and taken the opportunity to introduce the other boy’s crotch to her knee, and the three of them had ended up in detention.

“What are friends for?” she replies.

It’s then that Steve seems to get his head back. He looks her up and down, taking in the uniform.

“You got your orders?”

“The 107th. Sergeant Margaret Carter, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.”

 

 

 

Peggy thinks that Howard Stark is, quite honestly, a tremendous ass. He’s a genius, she understands, but the way he swaggers around up on the stage, slapping kisses onto the lips of his assistants... she stifles a laugh as his flying car showers sparks everywhere and crashes back down to the ground.

“I did say a few short years, didn’t I?” Howard covers awkwardly.

“Woah,” her date breathes in her ear. Steve’s date, the sweet blonde cousin of Peggy’s date, jumps and claps her hands excitedly at the display. Peggy looks to Steve and—

And Steve is gone.

“I’ll just be a moment,” she tells the other two, and then strides off in the direction she knows Steve has gone.

She finds him, predictably, fantasising about the soldier his health will never allow him to be.

“Are you really going to try this again?” she asks.

“Well, it’s a fair. I’m gonna try my luck,” Steve replies.

“And who are you going to be this time? Steve from Ohio? They’ll catch you falsifying the forms.”

 _Or worse, they’ll actually take you_ , she doesn’t say.

“There are men and women laying down their lives, Peggy. I got no right to do any less than them.”

It’s always been difficult to have to be the one to tell Steve that he just _can’t_ do something. Peggy’s had people telling her the very same thing all her life and happily proven them wrong, so she knows what it’s like. She’s about to be given the chance to go overseas and do what she wants to do—the same thing Steve has always wanted to do—and he’ll be at home, treating that 4F like it’s printed right on to his soul.

“Steve, there are plenty of other important jobs—” she tries, but she knows it’s no good. “Look, just don’t do anything stupid until I get back, alright?”

Their dates have followed her here, and are eager to know whether they’ll be going dancing. She’s half a mind to tell them to go already, to dance with each other and let her spend her last night here with her best friend.

“Of course we’re going dancing,” she tells them with a smile. The girl, Steve’s date, gives her a smile that, for a moment, makes the decision to leave Steve here feel worth it. She’s a pretty thing, full of energy and enthusiasm, and Peggy had been caught staring at the dark pink of her lips when they’d first met up.

“I just _adore_ your lipstick,” she’d covered hastily, before turning to the girl’s cousin and letting him take her by the arm. She hasn’t missed the way Steve watches _her_ dates, either. She’s not sure he’s realised it himself, though. He won’t realise it until he falls in love with someone, and she worries sometimes that that will happen when she’s not around to tell him it’s alright.

“Don’t win the war ‘til I get there,” Steve calls after her as she leaves.

 

 

º

 

Steve’s helmet is loose, like a giant turtle shell on his head. His uniform is baggy, his boots heavy. He stands to attention with the rest of the new recruits, each one of them at least a head taller than him.

He’s finally here, finally has his chance.

A man walks out to meet them. He has dark hair and clear eyes, a small straight nose, a wide mouth that Steve thinks would make for a brilliant smile. He’s reasonably tall—very tall next to Steve, though the majority of grown men are—and he walks with a paradoxical combination of formality and swagger.

“Alright everyone,” he says, “I’m Agent Barnes. I supervise all operations of this division.”

There are snickers from somewhere down the line. Steve doesn’t understand why, until one of the men pipes up with,

“Thought we were signing up for the army, not the ballet. I ain’t servin’ under some fairy.”

Barnes’ eyebrows rise, but beyond that he barely reacts to the slur.

“Put your right foot forward,” he orders.

“So what, you can dance with me? I ain’t some queer—”

He’s cut off by the swift swing of Agent Barnes’ arm, knocked to the ground by the punch. Steve stifles the tiny snicker that burbles up inside him—but he’s just a second too late in managing it, judging by the way Barnes’ attention suddenly rests on him. He straightens up again, holding himself like a soldier ought to.

Steve wonders briefly whether the guy had been right about Agent Barnes—whether he is actually a homosexual. Steve knows some people are good at telling that kind of thing. He’s not one of them, though; he grew up in a neighbourhood where it was hardly unheard of, but he could still never tell a gay man from a straight one until he actually saw him with another fella. He finds it strangely alluring, the notion that Barnes might be. It’s probably the fact that he’s in charge here, strong and capable and so unruffled by whatever accusations are levelled at him that he doesn’t have to confirm or deny anything, just keeps being professional. Obviously he could never admit to anything, and if any real evidence came to light he’d be discharged, but he doesn’t answer slurs with slurs. Steve’s all too aware that homosexuals get treated badly. Hell—he’s been beaten up by enough people who assumed he was one to know. But in the few short minutes Steve’s known of him, Barnes has already shown he’ll stand up to the bullies.

“I see you’re breaking in the new recruits, Agent Barnes,” Colonel Phillips commends when he arrives.

The man who’d tried to insult Barnes scrambles up out of the dust to salute the Colonel along with the rest of them.

“We are going to win this war because we have the best men,” Phillips tells the group of them. He hesitates towards the end, eyes lingering on Steve, and Steve should be immune to that kind of doubt by now, but it never really stopped hurting that he wasn’t big and strong and tall enough to be seen as the person he felt like he could be. Maybe it’s for the best. It’s never stopped driving him to show people they’re wrong, after all.

 

 

The way Agent Barnes smirks at Steve when he takes down the flag and climbs into the car beside him warms Steve inside. He thinks maybe this is what it’s like to be noticed, _seen_ , by someone other than Peggy.

 

 

º

 

 

“I know this neighbourhood. I got beat up in that alley,” Steve points out the car window. The car keeps moving, and he points to the next alley with the same commentary.

“Christ,” Bucky swears, “why, d’you have something against running away?”

“You start running and they’ll never let you stop,” Steve replies.

And yeah, alright, Bucky gets that. He’s spent enough of his time running—first from himself, and then from people who didn’t like who he was. He just cringes at the thought of skinny little Steve in a punch-up with some heavyweight bully. He wishes, futilely, that he could’ve been there to intervene in just one of those beatings.

“I know a bit of what that’s like,” he says, quietly. Bucky can feel Steve studying him, trying to pretend he isn’t as he does it.

“Why?” Steve asks eventually. “You’re strong and healthy and you seem like a good person. So why wouldn’t people want you on their teams?”

 Bucky chuckles. “You ain’t s’posed to ask, and I ain’t s’posed to tell, kid,” he mutters. What harm can it do, telling a scrap of a man who’s up for a procedure so insane he probably won’t make it through the day? he assures himself

.He turns to watch as the realisation dawns on Steve’s face. The surprise is there, surprise that that asshole Hodge’s assessment of Agent Barnes was actually correct, surprise that a tall army officer like him would be a fairy, or whatever it is that always seems to surprise other people so much when they catch a hint. But it never turns to anger, never turns to disgust—not unless Steve has, in this single moment, developed the ability to stop what he’s feeling from being painted all over his face.

Bucky wonders what he’ll say about it.

“I’m not a kid,” Steve says after a minute. Because of course _that’s_ the part of Bucky’s statement that Steve chooses to take exception to. Bucky likes to think he’s good at reading people, understanding them, but it’s going to take a bit longer to figure out what the hell makes Steve Rogers tick.

 

There’s an awful minute where he thinks he might never get the chance. They’ve put Steve inside the machine thing, pumped it all full of whatever-it-was and now Howard Stark is zapping him with enough power to black out the city, and Bucky can hear Steve shouting over the din, groaning loud and desperate like he’s in pain, like he’s dying in there. Bucky’s a soldier, he’s watched and listened as plenty of people died—even been instrumental in some of those deaths. That doesn’t mean he likes it, or, at the end of the day, that he will ever really grow accustomed, but it surprises him exactly how much he dislikes the idea that Steve might not make it through the procedure.

Steve, by far the most persistent person Bucky’s met, and certainly one of the most interesting. Nicest, too; just one of the best guys, really—

And oh, no, Bucky thinks as Steve tells them he’s fine, that he can do this. Bucky might really be in trouble here.

 

Steve steps out of the machine an oiled-up god of sex and yes, Bucky’s pretty fucking sure he’s going to make an absolute disaster of his career, of his whole entire self, over this man.

 

 

 

Sure enough, this is trouble, and Bucky is right smack in the centre of it. He’s up in some tiny plane, under fire, explosions booming thunderously in the night sky, rocking them. Howard Stark flies expertly, his haphazard course churning Bucky’s stomach. It serves him right, really, for asking him to do this in the first place. Bucky’s a madman, asking to be flown out into such dangerous airspace, and Stark is a madman for doing it, and Steve is the biggest goddamn madman of them all for conceiving of this mission in the first place.

Bucky wouldn’t have expected anything less of him, though.

He’s putting his job on the line here, as well as his life, but it’s worth it to see that smile, grateful, proud, more earnest than Bucky knows what to do with.

Stark offers a late-night fondue, and Bucky’s not entirely sure whether it’s meant as an innuendo or not, but Steve seem to take it that way.

“Do you two... fondue?” he asks, face reddening.

Bucky’s about ninety-nine per cent sure Howard Stark is a straight man, but the way he lets the comment stand, innuendo and all, gives Bucky life.

There’s also the way that Steve glances from Bucky to Stark to Bucky again, like he’s trying to process something difficult in his head. _Like maybe he’s a little jealous_ , Bucky’s brain offers, unhelpfully. _Or maybe he’s just that much of a virgin_ , he counters.

That said, the reason they’re here isn’t just to rescue the men in the 107th—there’s a dame amongst them, Peggy, who’s been Steve’s best friend for just about ever, from what Bucky’s gathered. He speaks too fondly of her to rule out the possibility that they might be more than that.

 

 _“The hell I can’t_ , _I’m a Captain_ , _”_ Steve sasses him, and then jumps out of the aircraft—absurd toy shield, chorus girl helmet, tights and all. He’s gone so quickly, freefalling through the haze of explosives on his way down to a place even more dangerous, and Bucky wonders whether he’ll ever see him again. He has to be accepting of the possibility that he won’t; this is war, and even for wartime this plan of Steve’s is insanity. All the same, he finds himself hanging on to his faith—faith that Steve has single-handedly created in him.

 

 

º

 

 

Peggy must be hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first strange dream she’s had here. Or the first nightmare—there isn’t much difference between those and reality anymore.

“Steve?” she asks, the first word she’s uttered aside from her name, rank and serial number in... well, god only knows how long it’s actually been.

“Come on,” says the vision of Steve, as it somehow begins unbuckling her bonds.

Peggy can’t even imagine how dreadful a sight she must be; her hair will be a mess, her dry lips feel rougher than torn sandpaper, her whole body aches, sometimes burning up, sometimes shivering with cold, and she’s not sure how much of her pain is attributable to surface cuts and bruises. Her clothes are torn but she fixes them up as best she can, then laughs at the absurdity of wanting to be presentable at all at a moment like this.

“I thought you were dead,” vision-Steve says, the relief in his voice going a long way to convincing Peggy that Steve actually might be here.

“...I thought you were smaller,” she replies. Because that’s definitely true. As she gets to her feet, she has to look up a fair way to find his face. The shoulders of his jacket seem to stretch out forever, and there’s no way Peggy’s Steve could even have carried some kind of oversized jacket too far, let alone fit it like this.

Still, she really does seem to have been unbound, so she lets the tall saviour who claims to be Steve lead her escape.

 

 

 

Johann Schmidt’s face sags, skin and features drooping, and then he grabs his own face—or what had appeared to be it—and tears it off. Peggy’s starting to understand that there truly are forces at play she hadn’t believed possible.

“ _Tell_ me you haven’t done that to yourself too,” she demands of Steve, who, thankfully, shakes his head.

 

They escape— _just_. The bridge goes down and Steve tells her to go on without him, to leave him behind to burn, as though she ever would. She’s always known about Steve’s self-sacrificing streak (wider than the entirety of his skinny old body had been) but this really is life and death, and Peggy knows she’s never going to be okay with how easily her best friend volunteers to die.

 

They march home, bringing Hydra’s futuristic weapons and a couple of tanks with them for good measure. Every damned officer in the group offers her a seat atop or inside one of the tanks, and she refuses until she’s blue in the face. Steve’s the only one who doesn’t ask if she’d rather sit than march; he does give her a look that says he’d like to, but he knows her well enough to know that if she wanted a seat she’d damn well take one.

They reach the camp, and amongst the men who greet them is Colonel Phillips, looking entirely surprised. Peggy’s heard the general story of how Steve ran off deep into enemy territory to rescue them, but she has a feeling it’d be much funnier if the Colonel had to tell it. There’s Agent Barnes as well, the one who’d supervised Peggy’s training when she’d first been recruited.

There are scores of them here, returning from imprisonment and torture, but Barnes only has eyes for one—and, by the look of it, that one only has eyes for Barnes. They stand, nearly nose to nose, and Barnes says,

“You’re late, you punk.”

Steve shrugs and holds up a smashed transmitter. “I couldn’t call my ride,” he grins.

Peggy wonders whether Steve’s realised he’s in love, yet.

 

Agent Barnes flirts with Peggy, and Peggy flirts back, just a little, just enough to get Steve flustered so that she and Barnes can share a look that says that yes, they’re on the same page when it comes to who Steve is.  

There’s a blonde Peggy’s had her eye on for a little while—entirely too straight for her liking, as far as she’s been able to tell, but that doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy the looking. It’s all going just fine until Peggy finds her kissing Steve. That is clearly the way of it—Steve is very much the one being kissed, not so much the kisser, Peggy knows him better than that—but it’s still a blow, still stings rather awfully.

“Hey, Peggy, wait—” Steve calls after her, no doubt wanting to explain himself. He doesn’t have to, but Peggy will still have to blow off some steam before she goes and forgives him.

 

Steve’s stricken face when he lowers the vibranium shield, having deflected the shots she fired at it, does the trick nicely; she never could stay mad at him when he looked so pathetic—but it’s good to confirm that this tall, muscled Captain America is no different to her old Steve in that regard.

“It works,” she tells him shortly.

 

 

Peggy gets into her favourite red dress and goes to the bar. It’s nice to get out of her uniform every so often; she misses the way the fine fabric, silky although she was never able to afford the real thing, whispers softly over her skin. She enters to the appreciative stares of many a fellow patron. Steve isn’t around just yet and Peggy spies Agent Barnes sitting, more or less alone, by the bar, so she makes her way over there and commandeers the seat beside him.

“What’s such a handsome man doing drinking all by himself this evening?” she asks, voice sultry. She lays a hand on his jacket sleeve, playing teasingly with the fabric.

A test.

Barnes certainly looks surprised by her advances—more brazen and less obviously false than their previous flirtations.

He coughs. “I’m not alone, now, am I?” he replies, but he still looks uncomfortable. After another moment, his charming smile drops away. He lowers his voice and murmurs into her ear, “Look, Sergeant Carter, maybe I’m mistaken here, but I’d kinda thought you and I had come to an understanding of sorts. You gotta know I don’t... ah. I don’t swing that way. You’re quite a dame, but I ain’t the man for you and you ain’t the one for me.” Barnes knocks back the rest of his drink before he turns to survey Peggy’s response.

“Well that’s just as well,” Peggy answers lightly. “You’re a good man, but that quite prevents you from being the woman I’m after.”

That earns a double take from Barnes.

“What,” Peggy arches a brow, “you thought you were the only queer in the army?”

Barnes processes for a moment. “Are you testing me, Sergeant?”

Peggy gives a single, curt nod of confirmation. “It it helps,” she tells him, “you’re passing.”

Barnes scoffs. “By what, being enough of a queer that I’d turn you down?”

“By not aggressively despising the part of yourself that cares for Steve—and, by extension, the part of him that cares for you. And also by trusting me.”

Barnes laughs genuinely at that, cheeky smile creeping back onto his face.

“I’m glad Steve’s had you to look out for him all these years,” he says, with such feeling that it warms Peggy’s heart.

“As am I,” she agrees. “And on that note—if you hurt him, you’ll never see me coming. I’m a sniper; I’ll barely even need to be there.”

“Good,” Barnes says, like he understands perfectly how thoroughly he’d deserve it.

“Good,” Peggy echoes, and tells the bartender to bring them both a fresh round.

 

 

 

They’re fighting HYDRA agents in a train, on their way to Zola, Schmidt’s pet scientist. It all happens quickly—as gunfights tend to, in Peggy’s experience. She crosses the aisle, firing as she goes, before ducking behind the shelves of cargo. Steve tosses her a new weapon, and then she’s using his shield, and then they seem to have succeeded, and then she’s flying through the air, grabbing the side of the damaged carriage only to have it peel away in her hands, and there is stomach-dropping freefall and piercing wind and there is cold, cold, cold—

 

 

º

 

 

Steve can’t stop those few moments from replaying themselves in his head, over and over and over. He’s not sure he would even if he could. They’re the last seconds of Peggy he ever got, the last he’ll ever have. He can’t afford to forget _any_ of her, certainly not out of the selfish desire to forget horrors that are his fault to begin with.

A thousand times, he reaches out his hand, trying desperately to grab a hold of Peggy’s hand and pull her back up into the train carriage. A thousand times, she falls. They’d always said they’d stick together ‘til the end of the line—but the end always seemed further away.

“Hey there.” Steve starts at the sound of a voice behind him. He’s surprised by that; his hearing was enhanced with the serum, but evidently he’s too caught up in his own head at the moment to pay proper attention to his surroundings. (He’d deserve it if he were ambushed, he thinks, harsh and bitter as the cold, the cold that swallowed Peggy—)

Agent Barnes walks up behind him, eyeing the liquor bottle Steve’s working his way through steadily, to no avail.

“The serum...” he tells Barnes, explains the situation in bits and pieces. “I can’t get drunk.”

“Yeah, Erskine thought that might be one of the side effects,” says Barnes, taking a seat beside Steve at the small table. “I’m sorry,” he puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, big and warm, and Steve’s inordinately glad that he leaves it there. “You have to know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

“Did you read the reports?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Then you know that’s not true.”

Barnes looks directly at him, holding Steve’s gaze. He looks fierce, the way he does when he issues orders, or is about to hit someone.

“Do you believe Sergeant Carter was capable of fighting in the army?”

Steve looks at him sharply, aghast for a moment until he realises it isn’t actual doubt in Peggy that Barnes is expressing.

“More than capable,” he says, the surest he’s been all night.

“Then you’ve gotta respect her choices. She chose to go out there, she chose to fight, and you both fought as hard as you could. Tryin’ to take the blame for her death is more or less the same as trying to take the credit for her courage, and I know you’re not a man who’d do that. Are you?”

“No sir,” Steve mumbles.

“None of that ‘sir’ business tonight, Steve. Call me Bucky. And pour me some’a that whiskey.”

“Bucky,” Steve tries the new name out. It sounds good. It fits. “Where’s that come from?”

“Middle name’s Buchanan,” Bucky explains, knocking back the drink Steve’d poured for him and quickly helping himself to another, even more generous one. He looks tired, weary, even by the standards of all the men around here.

“I’m going after Schmidt,” Steve tells him.

“’Course you are.”

“I’m not going to stop until all of Hydra is dead or captured,” he vows.

Bucky nods. “You won’t be alone, pal.” That comforting hand is back on Steve’s shoulder, fingers spread out, thumb rubbing gently beside Steve’s collarbone. Barnes’ attention on him suddenly feels all the more weighty. Steve wonders whether Barnes finds him attractive. A few of the women Steve’s encountered certainly have, though knowing they wanted him didn’t feel quite the same as the possibility that Bucky might. Steve feels his face flushing slightly at the thought. He wonders what Peggy would have to say about it.

He glances at Bucky, feeling suddenly self-conscious, as though his attention is hideously obvious and he can only afford to steal quick glances.

Bucky’s eyes are dark and heavy-lidded, his mouth soft-looking and shiny from the alcohol he’s been drinking. Steve’s never come close to kissing a man before, hasn’t even seriously thought about what it might be like before—but he looks at Bucky and by god, he wants to give it a try.

They pass a while that way, just sitting in silence, downing drink after drink, Steve furtively watching, admiring.

Bucky breaks the spell when he says, loud and forward, “Correct me if I’m wrong here, Steve, but—” and then dives forward, pressing his mouth against Steve’s.

It’s warm, and just as soft as it looked, and Bucky smells a lot like whiskey and a bit like the dirt that sticks to all of the soldiers, but a fair bit like something else too, something musky-rich and human that sends a shiver down Steve’s spine.

Bucky’s pressing his tongue along the seam of Steve’s lips, his movements messy and enthusiastic, when it occurs to Steve exactly what he’s doing.

It takes a great deal of effort to push Bucky away, but he does. Because it’s just not right.

Bucky looks at him questioningly, the hurt poorly masked on his face. “I didn’t think I was wrong,” he mumbles. “But look, I—”

“You weren’t wrong,” Steve assures him. “But you’re drunk, and I’m not. It’d be no good of me.”

“Captain America,” Bucky says, not quite slurring through the syllables, but sliding leisurely over them. “You’re too good for your own good. And my good. Definitely wishing you were a little less good right now.”

“You’ll thank me in the morning,” Steve assures him.

“I’ll thank you when I get a proper kiss,” Bucky grins, and something stirs in Steve’s gut at the sight.

“I think I’d like that,” he says, smiling back even past the grief that aches inside him, and hoping, hoping.

 

 

 

Schmidt’s taking to the air in a craft stocked with all the ingredients for virtual world destruction. The car speeds along the runway after it, faster than Steve knew any car could go. He needs to grab a hold of the plane before it leaves them behind, and before Colonel Phillips and Bucky pass the point of being able to stop the vehicle and go plummeting off the end.

Steve reaches out again but still fails to find the opportunity he needs.

“Hey,” Bucky shouts over the noise, through the rushing of the wind around them.

Steve looks down at him and his face is immediately caught by a strong, insistent hand, his mouth enveloped in firm, warm pressure. His eyes shut and for a moment, there’s nothing but that.

Steve wishes he never had to pull away, but he’s all too conscious of the fact that time’s of the essence, and he doesn’t really even have a moment to spare here.

“You owed me,” says Bucky.

In the car beside them, Phillips seems to be taking the whole thing in his stride. He doesn’t even look all that surprised, let alone shocked and disgusted—but maybe he’s just reasonable enough not to let it bother him in the circumstances. He doesn’t look impressed, either, but then he never does.

“I’m not kissing you,” Phillips tells Steve, and Steve hears Bucky laugh at that, and then he’s away, just in the nick of time.

 

 

º

 

 

“Steve?” Bucky repeats into the radio. “ _Steve_?”

There are tears in his eyes, and Jesus, he’s never been the sort to cry in front of anybody, but he can’t bring himself to care right now. It’s just like he’d expected—goddamned Steve Rogers ruining all his composure. None of the other agents in the room are awful enough to comment on the fact that people who are merely pals don’t spend their last words setting dates or promising dances with one another, and it’s the only mercy the moment offers. Bucky isn’t sure whether he’d have wrung their necks if they had, or just broken down and cried harder.

 

He keeps fighting, and eventually the war ends. There are too many men and women who have lost loved ones in one way or another, and it makes him feel ridiculous for wallowing in the grief. There’s a whole army of dames who’ve been married for years, who’ve had children with their now-lost husbands, and he’s been torn apart by the loss of a guy he only kissed a couple of times.

That, and the fact that the whole country is mourning the loss of Captain America somehow makes it harder for anyone to understand that Bucky Barnes is mourning Steve Rogers.

 

He tries to throw himself into his work—desk shit, code breaking and the like. It’s hard to do when the consequences of his affair with Steve are catching up. He watches as the men around him—men who are straight or deeply closeted like men are supposed to be—are given their assignments. Often they come back bruised and shaken, and it makes Bucky itch for a fight, itch to just work out some of the frustration at his own uselessness that’s mounting inside him, igniting his grief all over again. He watches as the other men in the office leave early for drinks without him, pointedly not inviting the rumoured queer who they’re only not actively beating on because everyone’s under orders not to let it get out to the public that Captain America’s best buddy is anything other than an ideal soldier, lest it tarnish Cap’s own reputation as a war hero. And, maybe, if they have an ounce of sense between them, they also keep their fists out of his face because his reputation for skill precedes him almost as readily as the rumours about his sexuality.

Really, he thinks bitterly, he’s lucky they keep him on at all.

 

And then Howard Stark calls up and asks him to help found the country’s brand new intelligence organisation. Bucky’s never been more grateful for the Stark bastard’s complete disinterest in propriety.

The days are much longer than before, but there’s not a whole lot else left for Bucky right now, so he relishes in the fact that what he’s doing might actually make the world a safer place.

“Reckon Steve would be proud?” he asks one night after Howard has plied him with one too many scotches.

The loss of Captain America, Bucky has learned, has changed Stark quite profoundly as well, loath as he is to show it in public. He’s still got people searching, still out on those search missions frequently himself, and every time he doesn’t find Steve Bucky watches him grow a little wearier and a little surer that the world won’t be right until he does.

“Let him be proud when we bring him home,” Stark answers, and pours his next drink a half-inch higher than the last.

Bucky wonders whether Stark thinks Steve’s still alive, somehow, when he makes comments like that. He wonders whether, in Stark’s eyes, it actually matters a great deal.

 

 

 

It takes longer than it probably should. It takes years. Decades—nearly a whole one for each kiss he got from Steve. Before the war he’d been such a sociable person, not entirely carefree but happy enough that in hindsight the memories feel like a lost paradise, the way other adults are always saying their childhoods do.

It takes longer than it should for him to move on, to find someone. But he does.

The man is a soldier too, a soldier from the 107th, captured alongside Peggy Carter, rescued on that first idiotic mission of Steve’s. Bucky has vague memories of him, of course, having helped in training those men and women, but the years in between have shaped the both of them into quite different people.

It takes him longer than it should to stop expecting that he deserves what he gets for ever letting people see him for what he is, and to start pushing back. Times are changing, attitudes are changing. Almost by accident he finds himself a sort of leader again, in a different kind of war, right at home in the US.

It takes him longer than it should to realise that it’s only once he’s both loving someone and fighting for something again that he can actually tell himself that Steve would be happy and believe it.

His partner wastes away in the stranglehold of a disease nobody gives a damn about for far too long, but he still has the strength to kick Bucky in the nuts when Bucky suggests that it’s somehow his fault, that some negligence or curse of Bucky’s is responsible for killing the people he loves. Still clutching his groin, Bucky resolves to get his shit together and do what he does best: keep fighting despite it all.

 

 

º

 

 

—cold, cold, _cold_ that melts into pure agony and then freezes over again, slowly, each moment like a new death; she couldn’t say where she is except that it’s some kind of hell—

            — _Sergeant Carter..._

_...The procedure has already started..._

 

Asset. She is an asset. A key one. _The_ Asset.

Some of the people who handle her seem reluctant—she can see that many of them are just the grunts, given the dirty work. Those with authority at least pretend not to be afraid of her. Some of them truly are not. She does not like the presence of those ones. Around them, her body quakes of its own volition. Her lungs constrict and her stomach rolls sickly, like the organs know something she doesn’t.

 _Amerikanka._ The Asset does not remember being American, but this is what they call her, so perhaps they are right. She speaks English fluently and automatically as she does Russian, though to her ears her own accent does not sound fully one thing or the other. Remnants of Spanish and Latin float in the corners of her mind too. Working vocabularies in French, German, Italian.

But American is what they call her. Their mouths sneer around the word. They bark it like a dog’s low language.

The skills she needs come naturally to her—clearly she honed them somewhere in the blankness of her past. There is room for improvement, however, and she pushes to ensure that it occurs. If all she knows of herself is deadly muscle memory, then she will try to become more herself by utilising and expanding it. It is her only lead; she gives chase.

She takes down the targets without difficulty and returns. She is greeted with a throne of torture and a bit to chomp on and a pain so complete it undoes her—

 

The Asset. She is the Asset.  
Amerikanka, they call her, though she does not remember being American. They say it like a swearword. Those who are new enough to be stupid but trained enough to be sufficiently brave taunt her with it as she puts the recruits that are brought before her through their paces. Many of them are nothing more than children, but she has not been instructed to show mercy and she does not waste her time with it. They are assets, as she is. She cannot remember her own training, but she remembers pain, and thinks that she must not have learned her craft through mercy either.

There are a few other agents who break the children in with her. A few of them men jeer at her, daring to come too close until one day she snaps an arm at the elbow, the force of her metal left limb no match for his flesh and bone.

There is a girl, too. Natalia Romanova, the Asset has heard her called. She wonders who gave her the name, and who she is that she has one. Natalia speaks rarely, fights gracefully. She is very beautiful, the Asset notes, cataloguing the useless information for a reason she cannot isolate. Something in her muscle memory seems to respond to the sight of the girl, but it is not a combat technique, and she doesn’t know what she is supposed to use it for.

The Asset wonders whether she should approach Romanova, but before she can decide she is called out on a new assignment.

She returns and is greeted by a bit to chomp on, claustrophobia and the creep of ice, a too-slow sleep—

 

 

The Asset. She is the Asset. They call her American, though she does not remember being in America. She does not remember being otherwise, either, so she systematically pounds each sparring partner with the gall to try and mock her for it. Most shy away if she comes close, anyway.

There is a woman, a quiet flicker of flame in the background of many scenes, who steps into the ring one day and holds her own for twice as long as any of the others manage. Romanova, she says she is called. Natalia. She does not look or sound any more afraid of the Asset than perfect logic demands. She is cautious but not intimidated.

She is beautiful, the Asset observes, as Romanova’s body whirls through the air, vicious but seemingly weightless. Something in the Asset’s muscle memory seems to respond to the sight of the her, but the urge is not to execute any kind of combat technique, and she does not know what function she is supposed to use it for, so she files the strange sensation away until Romanova is picking herself up off the floor and the next agent is stepping up. As he approaches, he asks if there isn’t some other kind of wrestling she’d rather do with him, tells her that maybe once he knocks her to the ground he’ll show her how to treat a man.

He lasts barely ten seconds. She flicks him aside and sees Natalia watching from the corner of the room, amused. The Asset finds that she enjoys the suggestion of approval. It is foreign, but she wishes to make it familiar somehow.

 

 

Amerikanka. The name sounds familiar amongst the creeping pain. It does not feel like it _is_ her, but she knows that she has been called it before. She feels disoriented, but before long she is ordered back to a gym she recognises, to train agents, some of whom look familiar.

There is a young woman who looks at her with particular interest. The Asset remembers her—Romanova, she is called. The Asset’s memory of her is clearly outdated, though; she has grown since she last saw her, filling out her training clothes with toned muscles and curves.

“It’s been a while,” Romanova says softly as she steps into the ring.

The Asset nods. She wonders how long it has been, what she was doing between the last time she saw this woman and now.

Romanova puts up a fight far more valiant than any of her peers. The Asset remembers enough not to be surprised. She remembers the things she felt when she looked at Romanova before—things that seem to tug deeper through her muscle and down to her bone, now. She has the sudden urge to tell Romanova about it, to confess whatever this is, confess that she wants to come closer, reach out and touch her with something other than a swift kick or punch.

“Good work,” she tells Romanova softly as they finish sparring. It’s more than she’s ever told any of the other assets, and the fleeting look of surprise on the woman’s face tells her that she knows as much.

Romanova lays a hand on the Asset’s waist, a tiny, careful movement shielded from onlookers by the angles of their bodies. Through the Asset’s clothing, she can feel the warmth of it, and she craves more.

Romanova clearly receives whatever kind of reaction she’s looking for, because she murmurs, “Come and find me tonight.”

The Asset works through the remaining students mercilessly, and then sets about gathering whatever intel she can on Romanova; who she is, and where exactly to go about finding her.

 

 

º

 

Natalia is pleased when her window slides soundlessly open and the one they have begun to address as the Winter Soldier climbs in. Once inside, she stands by the window as though awaiting instruction.

“Come here,” Natalia says, gesturing towards the bed she lies upon. The Soldier does, kneeling into the soft mattress. Natalia pulls her in by the waist and the back of the neck, guides her closer until they are pressed flush. She can feel the Soldier’s heart beating quickly.

“You should speak,” Natalia tells her. “Tell me what you want, and what you like.”

“Natalia,” the Soldier says, sounding stiff and formal but for the slight crack in her voice. Natalia treasures the tiny slip.

“Call me Tasha, if you like,” she says. It’s what her friends would call her, if friends were something she had.

“Tasha.”

Natalia smiles, and the Winter Soldier smiles back at her, the kind of expression she’d never imagined seeing on that stony face. She kisses it, and the Soldier opens under her mouth. She feels like desire wrapped in inexperience, or perhaps some kind of deeper confusion. Natalia doesn’t know the details of what they do to the Soldier, but she’s well aware that their training has the power to make, unmake, and make again.

“Why?” the Soldier asks.

“Why what?”

“Why... this?”

“Because you want it.”

The Soldier nods, like she’s aware of that much but still isn’t sure how.

“They think the desire has been frozen out of you because you do not want what they offer you,” says Natalia, remembering the times she’s seen men’s crude offers ignored, heard them grumbling afterwards about how the bitch just mustn’t have it in her anymore. She lifts a hand and brushes the limp hair away from the Soldier’s face.

 “Men,” Natalia murmurs.

This time it is the Winter Soldier that pulls her in for the kiss. Natalia finds herself somewhat relieved—it’s one thing to want with your body, another to want with you mind. She can read the first on the Soldier well enough, but not the second.

“I wish I could call you by a real name,” Natalia confesses, as she sets about using skills she learned for business for pleasure for the first time in a long time. The Winter Soldier doesn’t speak much as she does it, but the little sounds that escape her as she softens and melts under Natalia’s ministrations are more than enough. 

 

 

Natalia gets a name after all. It’s an alias, sure, but then so is her own name, and much of her identity; the moment _Natalia Romanova_ becomes inconvenient she fully expects to become someone else.

Natalia and her older cousin Margaritka are sent to London on a mission. The accent comes very naturally to the Winter Soldier— _Margaritka_ —not that Natalia herself struggles with simple things like accents.

“Have you been here before?” Natalia asks, on the off chance Margaritka might actually know.

Margaritka, who has left her usual thick leather body armour behind and is instead wrapped in a fur-trimmed coat, complete with gloves to mask her metal hand, looks pained for a second.

“I think so,” she says, which is a hell of a lot more than Natalia was honestly expecting.

Natalia and Margaritka allow a couple of the British men to buy them drinks, but in the absence of their target, they return home in only each other’s company.

When Margaritka reaches for Natalia’s hand, reels her in and kisses her, Natalia doesn’t have the heart to even suggest that they refrain, that it would compromise both of them. She suspects that it’s too late to hide it from their handlers anyway. Once this mission is over, Natalia expects punishment, and she expects the sudden, marked absence of Margaritka from her life.

“It’s actually not so bad here,” she remarks, voice growing thready as Margarika’s lips make their way down her neck. Teeth grate over the skin and Natalia allows it when Margaritka sucks bruises there because they will fade quickly, a convenient benefit of the serum treatment Natalia received when she was deemed old enough, and which everyone knows the Winter Soldier received before all the rest of them. “All things considered,” she adds, because to suggest that England could truly be preferable to Mother Russia was certainly not wise, even if it could have been true.

“We should stay,” Margaritka mutters. Natalia trusts her own hearing, but she has to take a moment to be sure that what she’s said wasn’t _I wish we could stay awhile_ , or _If the world were different and Russia did not need us it might be nice to stay_ , but an actual suggestion.

She pulls away.

“What?”

Margaritka squares her shoulders and says again, louder this time, “We should stay here.”

It’s unthinkable, and it’s against everything Natalia’s ever been taught, everything she can remember knowing.

“Just think,” says Margaritka, “we could be together. And not be punished any more.”

It’s tempting, and the temptation makes Natalia feel unsteady. None of this was part of the plan.

“You want it,” Margaritka says, the same soft words Natalia had said when they were first together. The reversal irks Natalia. She feels weak for contemplating the lure of treason, and she feels equally weak for being unable to commit to it.

“We take out the targets and we return home,” Natalia insists. The words taste surprisingly bitter in her mouth, for such basic order-following.

“Home,” Margaritka repeats dully after her, like the word is foreign.

“Yes. To Russia. To the Red Room. Where we belong.”

Margaritka is largely silent after that. She does not so much as kiss Natalia.

Three days later the target is eliminated and they have the intel they came for. When they return, Natalia confesses enough to the handlers that they won’t feel the need to pry further, following their suspicions all the way to the inside of her head. They break as much of her as they can without compromising the next mission she’ll be sent away on in a few weeks’ time. She’s almost thankful for the pain when they take Margaritka away and the Winter Soldier dares to glance back, brown eyes filled with the kind of fearful resignation Natalia sees flicker over the countenances of targets who don’t use their last split seconds to run or scream because they know enough to recognise a certain death when they see it. Margaritka’s eyes haunt Natalia’s dreams for longer even than the face of the first man she ever killed did.

On every mission she takes out of the country, she hears Margaritka’s voice in her ear, suggesting freedom. She’s in North America, in a hamburger joint, when she decides to simply leave; to be somewhere far away when they come to collect her.

She burns through aliases like lightning. To remember them—and, she thinks sometimes, to remember herself—she bases them on the two names that have ever meant anything other than pain to her. She is Natalia, Natasha, Natalie, Talia. Margarita, Marguerite, Margaret, Maggie, Peggy, Rita, Meg, Margot.

She expects never to see the Winter Soldier again, but she does. They’re in Iran, and the Soldier looks her right in the eye as she assassinates the engineer Natalia is covering.

“Margaritka?” Natalia chokes out as her belly bleeds.

The Winter Soldier pauses, but doesn’t reply. Natalia wonders whether it’s because she lacks recognition after the memory tampering, or because she hasn’t forgiven Natalia for betraying her and then leaving anyway, leaving without her. She then feels selfish for wondering which option is really the worse.

Feeling nothing is far preferable.

 

 

Natalia looks for the Winter Soldier, but the woman is a ghost, and it proves to be a wild goose chase. Most of the time there’s no guarantee she’s even out and about—she could be on ice for the next decade, for all Natalia knows. Every now and then something of interest pops up, something that Natalia suspects is Margaritka’s handiwork, but these incidents are too sporadic and too sterile to give her any real leads.

She hears about the demise of the Red Room because all of a sudden the market is awash with Russian assassins. Natalia’s been freelancing for a few years now, though, and she’s made a name for herself. There might be other Black Widows out there, but none of them are Natalia Alianova Romanova.

She makes her way until a moron with a bow and arrow gets in the way. Tired of the aimless murders and more than a little intrigued by the silly archer who looks at her like there could actually be something underneath if he were to wipe the blood away, she decides to let him.

 

º

 

Sam Wilson watches the replays of Tony Stark on the television announcing that he is Iron Man. Tony Stark, billionaire and notorious bastard, is a hero with a suit that can fly. He looks at the photo of himself and Riley on the dresser and swings between toxic jealousy and the desire to call Stark and tell him none of it’s worth the people he’ll lose along the way. It’s four in the morning and there’s no way in hell Sam’s getting back to sleep like this, so he makes some coffee and pretends he’s just up early because he likes sunrises.

Riley liked sunrises more than Sam does. As the colour begins to tinge the horizon, Sam watches it because Riley’s missing out. The images of Bakhmala stain the scene as a flock of birds flies in silhouette across the sky. He sees the sickly lurch of Riley’s form, suddenly knocked off course and falling limply out of the sky. He wonders whether four a.m. means it’s too early to spike his coffee or whether he can still count it as the night before. Not like he’d really slept, anyway.

 

Sam starts taking therapy seriously after Riley’s twelve-year-old son works out his address and shows up one afternoon, wanting to hear stories about his dad in action. It’s three thirty and Sam’s already midway through a bottle, and instead of telling the kid how his dad was a hero he just sits and cries until the boy leaves. Riley would be ashamed of him, and Sam is ashamed of himself. It’s the tipping point.

He gets back on his feet. He runs every morning, and in his opinion the endorphins help at least as much as the prescriptions from his psychiatrist. He goes to a VA meeting, then another, and, once he finds his voice, he realises that he can do a lot of good here by speaking up.

He stops sleeping on the floor and starts sleeping on the couch. He stops sleeping on the couch and sleeps in his bed again. He doesn’t spike his morning coffees.

He listens to the people at the VA, makes some friends, remembers the sociable guy he used to be. He starts smiling again, and it feels more natural than frowning. Nobody’s a replacement for Riley, but that’s the way people are; they’re never interchangeable. That fact makes is easier to let people in, not harder. Nobody’s asking him to forget about Riley or somehow overwrite their friendship just because he’s meeting new people too.

Sam Wilson gets his life back together, and then he goes to visit Riley’s son with some photos and a careful selection of pages copied from one of his journals.

 

 

Sam watches footage of not only Iron Man but a giant green monster, a guy who _really does look like a Norse god,_ a couple of badass-looking spies that the news cameras don’t seem to be able to get a real fix on, and—holy shit—the actual, revived Captain America, complete with spangly outfit. Sam’d be freaking out a little more about the forties war hero whose action figures he played with as a kid if it weren’t for the _other_ Norse god, and all the goddamn aliens.

Sam’s tempted to race to New York City himself and jump into the fray. He’s not going back into the army, but the last several years with the VA have been beyond helpful, and he’s not afraid of the parts of service he used to enjoy. He’s travelled on planes without white-knuckling it. He’s gone bungee jumping and skydiving. He’s considered hang gliding. Watching from the sidelines sucks when he knows he has the skills to be useful. He doesn’t have the equipment, though, and while he can sure as hell handle a gun or two, he’d just be another guy shooting useless bullets at the armoured, flying aliens from amongst the rubble on the street.

_Aliens._

Sam doesn’t think anyone would blame him for having a drink when there are aliens trying to invade New York. He doesn’t have one, though.

 

 

Two years after the Avengers prevent New York from falling to aliens, Sam’s on his usual dawn jog one morning when some asshole rockets past him.

“On your left!” the guy says, speeding off as if he’s riding an invisible motorcycle or something. Sam’s not an idiot, so he puts two and two together as he watches the man sprint around and pass him again, cutting it so close Sam’s almost thrown off course by the way the air rushes past him on his left side.

He’s being made fun of by _Captain America_.

He spends a few minutes in awe, before the Captain passes him again with what must be the fiftieth snarky “On your left!” and Sam realises that his childhood hero is kind of a little shit.

“Don’t say it!” he pants the next time he hears the pounding of Cap’s footsteps approaching.

“On your left.”

Cap pulls up beside Sam when he finishes running and collapses in the shade of a tree, and introduces himself as though that’s really necessary. Still, the introduction means he can stop mentally referring to the guy as ‘Captain’. Sam kind of feels like Captain America’s not really who he’s met this morning, anyway. This is Steve Rogers.

He recommends the Trouble Man soundtrack, because it’s definitely one of the best things since the forties. Steve smiles in a way that’s kind of completely blinding, and takes out a little notebook to add the recommendation to his list. It’s adorable. Ridiculously adorable for a mountain of muscle in a shirt that should probably have been bought a size or two larger. Sam tries not to ogle the national treasure too blatantly.

“I’m sure there’s a whole lot of movies you’ll need to add to that list too,” Sam grins. “I can’t imagine you’ve had much time for TV in between, y’know, working out, saving the world and shrinking all your t-shirts in the wash.”

He suggests that Steve visit the VA. “Make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk,” he adds.

“I’m sure you don’t need me in order to do that,” Steve says, and it takes Sam a second to realise he’s not just being sarcastic.

“Actually, you know what, she probably wouldn’t take a second look at me with you standing right there too,” Sam laughs.

Steve chuckles a little awkwardly. “I wouldn’t want to get in your way. She’s not my type, anyhow.”

Sam frowns. “What, how can you know that? You’ve never met her. Literally all you know is she’s a girl who works in reception at the VA.”

Steve shrugs. Sam can’t pin the look on his face, which is weird because he’s already seen enough to know that Steve’s an expressive guy. A redhead pulls up in a hot, black muscle car and Steve goes with her. It’s only later when he’s reflecting on the conversation that Sam realises there’s a possibility Captain America just tried to come out to him.

He tries and fails not to dwell on all the implications of _that_.

 

º

 

It takes some time for Steve for work up the courage to visit Bucky. The aftermath of New York keeps him busy, along with the other Avengers and the rest of SHIELD’s agents. It’s a question from a reporter that finally pushes him into going; the woman asks how Steve feels about the revelation that James Barnes, his best friend—aside from his sweetheart Peggy Carter, of course—turned out to be gay. Steve tries to brush the question off. He says that Bucky was one of the very best officers he knew, and that he has always had the utmost respect for him.

He goes home after the press conference and finally reads all the histories he never managed to open before. He researches what happened to Bucky Barnes, and he learns a bit about who everyone else thinks Captain America is.

Bucky has a face full of laugh and frown lines that Steve doesn’t recognise. His skin is wrinkled and he has a different look in his eyes. It strikes Steve that he’s not a young man anymore. Steve may be ninety-five when you count it one way, but really he’s not even thirty yet. Bucky’s lived out his years; aged and grown old. There’s a world between them now.

“You didn’t tell them about us, Buck,” Steve says quietly, once Bucky’s finished staring at him in disbelief.

Bucky chuckles. “Nobody’s called me that in a while,” he says. “And no, I didn’t tell them about us—about you. It wasn’t my place.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Steve takes Bucky’s wrinkled hand and grips it as gently as he can.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re here now to tell ‘em. You go right ahead, whenever you’re ready, Stevie. But I don’t regret refusing to spill my tragic secrets to all the assholes who just wanted to try and smear your name. I told ‘em you were a war hero and they oughtta let you rest in peace. And since you seem to be done with the resting, I’m glad I left it to you to come out on your own.”

Steve knows Bucky’s right; waking up in the twenty-first century was difficult enough. Waking up and having everyone know every detail of his private life would have been... too much. Even if it’s okay, now—he wouldn’t go to jail for wanting to be with another man—he knows it’s not a perfect world yet either. America still really likes it patriotic symbols heterosexual.

“Funny,” Bucky says when Steve voices that thought. “America’s so in love with its straightness, and yet three of its favourite war heroes were queer as anything.”

“Three?” Steve asks, puzzled. He hadn’t been aware of anyone, besides Bucky and himself. Bucky’s memory is patchy these days, although the long-term details aren’t usually the problem.

Bucky opens his mouth to answer, but whatever words were coming disintegrate into a dry wheezing cough. Steve hurriedly offers him water, but by the time Bucky rights himself again, the interaction has been wiped away.

“Stevie?” he says, with disbelief in his aged eyes. “Thought you were dead, you bastard.”

“Nope,” Steve says, trying to smile but knowing the attempt must be melting into some strange, pained contortion of the face.

“’d I make you proud, Stevie?” Bucky asks, sounding drowsy.

“So proud, Buck,” Steve assures him. He’s read about the things Bucky’s been a part of—founding SHIELD; campaigning for the rights of men and women like them; opening the country’s eyes to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It hurts to know that Bucky lived an incredible life without him, but the ache that Steve feels isn’t entirely the bad kind.

 

º

 

One thing Natalia Romanova and Natasha Romanoff have in common is their hatred of uncertainty. Ambiguity they’ve always dealt in happily enough—the morally grey is nothing to them, the careful interweaving of truth and lies, the duplicity of undercover work. Inflicting uncertainty upon others is a specialty—but dealing with uncertainty of their own is not something either has ever liked.  

Natasha can feel SHIELD crumbling around her. Fury is dead. Steve Rogers trusts her as little as ever and probably holds the key to unravelling the whole mystery, but won’t hand it over. And the Winter Soldier is back. Margaritka is here, and her slugs have been pulled out of Nick Fury’s lifeless body, and Natasha’s carefully buried past is finally catching up to her. She wishes Clint were here, but he’s not. She hopes he’s safe, at least.

Natasha’s got tricks up her sleeve, things left over from her time as Natalia and things running through her veins that give her a superhuman edge—but she knows when she might well be about to lose a fight. She hasn’t lost many before—but when she has, it’s been to the Winter Soldier.

She buys out the vending machine’s supply of strawberry hubba bubba and chews on a piece as she lingers at the hospital, flash drive in her pocket. Steve shows up again soon enough, hoping to reclaim the data. Natasha pops one of her gum bubbles emphatically and he steers her into one of the empty nearby rooms. He’s still mad, but at least he’s listening to her now. Natasha can work with this.

“I know who shot Nick Fury,” she confesses, and she tells Steve about the Winter Soldier. She leaves out certain details; she doesn’t say the name Margaritka. She doesn’t tell him how the Soldier used to groan when Natalia was between her legs. She doesn’t mention that, since arriving in the US to stay, she’s read up on enough history to recognise the familiar face of a war heroine. She doesn’t say the name Peggy.

 

Natasha and Steve end up on the doorstep of a guy named Sam. She recognises him as Steve’s running buddy. He lets them in with a lack of hesitation that suggests attachment, a lack of self-preservation despite his sensible act, or both.

Steve looks at Sam like he’s finally found the best thing about the twenty-first century and it’s offering him a glass of juice. Steve and Natasha rinse the explosion-dust off themselves and then it’s Sam’s turn to stare at Steve in his little white muscle singlet.

Natasha stops trying to set Steve up with girls from the office. SHIELD isn’t a great dating pool right now, anyway.

 

º

 

Sam loves these crazy motherfuckers.

He’s a guy who gets a kick out of hurtling through the air wearing a pair of metal wings while people fire on him, but next to Captain America and the Black Widow, Sam can indulge his madness to its fullest extent and _still_ look like the sensible, well-adjusted one. It’s pretty awesome.

That and the fact that said crazy motherfuckers have _given him his wings back_. He doesn’t even want to know how they got into that facility, what favours they might have called in to do it. All Sam knows is that all his Christmases have come at once.

That’s how he feels until the Winter Soldier rips the steering wheel he’s driving with right out of his hands and throws it away. At that point everything’s back to being kind of terrifying. Shit gets messy on the bridge. Cars crash everywhere; Steve gets thrown through the air and takes a while to show back up in the fight; some buses get shot to hell, and Natasha takes one to the shoulder. She keeps fighting through it. Sam is as impressed as he is terrified by her.

Things really get messy, though, when the Winter Soldier’s mask hits the ground. One look at the face all that long, dark hair frames, and Steve is on his knees, STRIKE agents at his back. Natasha and Sam go easily once they get Steve.

Sam argues with the armoured HYDRA douchebags guarding them in the van as they’re driven away, presumably to be shot like sick dogs. (Sam likes to think that miracles can happen, though. Miracles like them somehow not being executed by these people.)

“We need to get pressure on the wound,” he says, indicating the spot on Natasha’s shoulder where dark blood stains the punctured brown leather of her jacket.

“It’s fine,” Natasha says.

“ _How_ is that fine?” Sam would throw his hands up if they were free. “Unless you’re some kind of super-soldier like him,” he nods his head in Steve’s direction, “then you’re in danger of bleeding out right now!”

Natasha remains suspiciously quiet.

Sam gets the message. “Really?” he cries. “You too? Is anyone around here just a regular human being? Besides me?”

“That’s classified information,” says a brunette woman with a nasal voice who’s just pulled a HYDRA helmet off her head. She’s just taken out the other guard, and Natasha and Steve seem mighty relieved to see her, so she mustn’t actually be HYDRA. “Who are you, by the way?” she asks Sam.

Sam raises his eyebrows at her. “Could ask you the same thing, lady.”

Maria Hill offers Sam the briefest, most impatient introduction ever, but he figures it’s excusable since she’s also busy with getting them out of the damn HYDRA van so they can live to be shot at another day.

Steve explains that the Winter Soldier is Peggy Carter. He rounds on Natasha when she says that yes, she knew that. Sam, on the other hand, definitely wasn’t expecting this. He’s read all about Peggy Carter; the woman who was never supposed to be in the 107th but was just too determined and too damn good with a rifle—and her fists—to be left behind. After Cap rescued her and the other prisoners, she joined the Howling Commandos. Sam’s read the stories of how Peggy and Steve grew up together, from childhood sweethearts to wartime sweethearts. Those stories are hard to avoid, honestly, if one owns a TV.

“So,” he says to Steve. “That’s your ex-girlfriend.”

Steve, unbelievably, shakes his head.

That’s when Natasha chimes in with, “No; she’s mine.”

“ _What_?” Steve squawks. Then his face shifts with some kind of realisation. “Bucky knew,” he says. “I lived with Peggy my whole life and I never had a clue—but Bucky knew.”

“Anythin’ else I should know, for when I’m rewriting every history book in existence?” Sam asks.

 “Yeah,” Steve says softly. “Someone needs to add in the part about how I loved Bucky Barnes.”

And that’s how Sam, who will swing either way happily enough, ends up being not only the sensible one in the team, but also the closest thing they’ve got to a straight guy. The media is going to collectively shit its pants if they ever find out.

Sam tries to tell himself it doesn’t make any difference whether Steve’s into guys or not. Doesn’t mean he’d be into Sam. Sam’s mostly just honoured that he gets to know.

 

º

 

Natasha needs to get down on the ground. They’ve left Steve up against the Winter Soldier on his own, and he’s convinced that his best friend Peggy’s still inside that head, that she can be called out if he just _wants_ it hard enough. Natasha knows that, at times, there has been a woman in there who wasn’t quite the Winter Soldier—but she also knows that that person probably disappeared for good after their mission in London, years and years ago. If it comes down to it, Steve won’t be able to take the Soldier down—but Natasha’s good at doing things she doesn’t want to do.

With Alexander Pierce taken care of, she changes out of her councilwoman costume—a nicely cut blue suit that, if it weren’t so distinctive, she’d probably like to keep—and into her SHIELD bodysuit. She and Nick catch Sam as he leaps out of the triskelion.

“Get me to that helicarrier,” she tells Nick, who must find some strategic value in the action, because he does it. Natasha makes sure she’s got every weapon she might need before leaping out of the chopper and fighting her way down to where Steve and Peggy are facing one another, Steve’s eyes full of desperation, Peggy’s perfectly cold and empty.

“Margaritka!” Natasha calls, a gun ready in each hand, knives ready to be taken out if things get up close and personal. She knows the Winter Soldier has a preferences for blades.  

“Peggy,” Steve is saying, still completely focused on the black-clad brunette staring him down. “I don’t want to fight you. Please don’t make me do this.”

The shot the Winter Soldier fires at Natasha misses her by a hair as she dives out of the way. The shot she fires at Steve doesn’t miss. Steve grunts but doesn’t back down. If he’s going to make it out of this alive, Natasha thinks, it’s very likely he’ll need her help.

“You were right, Margaritka,” Natasha calls. She speaks in Russian, this time, in case it helps. “We should have stayed in London. I betrayed you then, and I was wrong.”

“I have not been to London,” the Winter Soldier spits.

“What’s she saying?” Steve asks, but translating for him isn’t Natasha’s priority right now.

“They took your memories from you. At the Red Room, they did that to all of us when they felt they needed to.”

Nothing is clicking. Not the sound of Natasha’s voice; not names or places or apologies. There’s only one more thing Natasha can think of to try—something that the young Natalia Romanova still had even after she woke up in a strange place with no memories. The same thing that told Natalia the Soldier wanted her before the Soldier had even realised what that meant.

She puts her guns back against her hips and makes sure her knives are first priority for accessibility. She’s going to have to get a lot closer than this to appeal to the memories that reside not in Margaritka’s mind, but in her body.

She’s swinging her way down towards the walkway where Steve and the Soldier are when they launch into action. She swears as Steve’s shield flies and Peggy fires on him with a gun in each hand. She directs a few up towards Natasha, forcing her to let go. She drops heavily onto the sloped platform below, landing hard on her hands and knees. Steve tries in fits and starts to switch the chips as the Soldier keeps coming at him. Natasha’s looking around for a way back up to their level when the pair of them careen over the railing and nearly land on top of her. The chip slides out of Steve’s hand, and Natasha grabs it before it can fall over the edge. Steve and the Soldier are back at each other’s throats, until a kick from Steve sends her off the end of the platform. He looks ready to leap off and follow her down.

“Steve!” Natasha stops him. She holds the chip out to him. “I want to try something. Make sure the chip finds its way home.”

Steve looks ready to disagree.

“I might be able to jog her memory—but one of us needs to get that chip where it belongs or millions of people are going to _die_ ,” she reminds him.

Steve snatches the chip from her hand and gives her a look that says, _Don’t you dare kill her_. He climbs back up as Natasha dives down after the Winter Soldier. She flings herself on top of her while she’s still sprawled out on the floor. The Soldier’s already reaching for her gun, but Natasha manages to knock one of the weapons away, at least.

“Margaritka,” she says, voice coming out strained as the Soldier’s metal hand crunches the bones in her wrist. The wrist will heal soon, but in the meantime it’s lucky Natasha’s just as good with her left hand as her right.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” the Soldier asks through gritted teeth as Natasha wrestles with her. She throws in as many of the moves that the Soldier taught her as she can, even though it makes them easy to predict and deflect. In this case, she _wants_ them to be familiar.

“Because it was the name I knew you by,” Natasha answers. “Steve up there calls you Peggy, because that’s what he knew you as. You’ve been different people. So have I. What’s important isn’t who you are but who you know, and you know me. You know Steve. You know us.”

“You’re my missions,” the Soldier says. She sounds frustrated, which Natasha takes as a good sign. She’s not sure what she wants to do—which means she’s actually _thinking_ about what she wants to do.

“You once told me we should walk out in the middle of a mission. That it wasn’t worth it. That we should run away and be together instead,” Natasha says softly.

“No,” the Soldier spits.

Natasha smiles. “I’m afraid that was _my_ line. And I’ve regretted it for a long time. You didn’t want to do this anymore and I sent you back, and I won’t let you hurt anyone else, because I know you don’t want to. Steve up there doesn’t understand. He’ll let you beat him to a pulp before he lays a hand on you—but I know that’s not mercy.”

The Soldier rolls them over so that she’s on top of Natasha. She draws a blade and forces it down into Natasha’s shoulder, where her bullet wound is still healing.

Natasha grins up at her through the pain, because she knows that with the strength of her metal arm, the Soldier could easily have directed the blade right into her heart. And she didn’t.

Natasha moves one of her legs so that it’s between the Soldier’s. She looks startled as Natasha’s thigh presses up, like she doesn’t know what it is that she’s feeling. What’s important is that she’s feeling it. Natasha makes use of that moment of uncertainty, gripping the Soldier’s hair with her good hand and tugging her down by it. She kisses her roughly, half-expecting to be bitten for her trouble.

The Soldier stills for the longest moment. Natasha dares to run her tongue along her bottom lip, the way Margaritka always liked. The Soldier makes a pained little noise and pulls back.

“I’ve never done that before,” she says, apparently to herself. She doesn’t look like she believes a word she’s saying.

“You know that you have,” Natasha replies.

“Peggy!” Steve’s done with the chip and he’s sliding down the sloped platform towards them.

The Soldier tenses. She gets to her feet again and pulls her gun on Steve.

Damn it.

“I’m not gonna fight you, Peg,” Steve says, and he drops his shield down into the river. Natasha sighs, getting to her feet.

Peggy points the gun at her and, without hesitation, fires a quick shot into Natasha’s gut. The bullet’s an instruction to stay down, not a kill shot. Natasha could get back up and keep fighting if she really had to, but she knows what is and isn’t sensible, too. Steve’s here. She’ll give him his turn now, and she’ll focus on not passing out.

“Then killing you will be easy,” the Soldier tells Steve.

Natasha hopes he doesn’t actually let her go through with it. Making her kill her childhood best friend is the perfect way to make sure that Peggy Carter never comes back—that she never even wants to try. That, and Natasha really doesn’t want to watch Steve die. They’re finally friends, she thinks. This will hurt them all.

The Soldier goes at Steve with her fists, like she can beat him into retracting everything he’s said about knowing her. Like if she hits him hard enough she too will forget he ever said anything. She’s off-balance, muscle memory already telling her she’s not who she thinks she is.

“Peggy. You’re my friend,” Steve says, face already swelling. When the Soldier doesn’t let up, Natasha starts crawling towards them, wounds be damned.

“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line,” Steve says, and the Soldier pulls her arm back but doesn’t bring it down. Natasha can’t see her face, but there’s something in Steve’s eyes that looks like hope.

The helicarrier explodes around them and a falling beam knocks Steve down into the water. That’s all Natasha sees before she’s falling as well, and everything is painful and dark.

 

º

 

Sam puts on the Trouble Man soundtrack in Steve and Natasha’s hospital room, because that ought to lighten the mood when they wake up. The waking up thing takes longer than he expected, though, so he’s listened through the album at least thirty times before Steve even opens his eyes. It’s fine; Sam could listen to Marvin Gaye forever.

“On your left,” Steve says weakly, and Sam laughs.

“You’re an idiot, man,” he tells Steve.

“You love me,” Steve jokes.

Sam can’t make his face do what he wants it to, though.

“Yeah,” he says, too seriously. “I know.”

 

 

They stand around the gravestone of Nicholas J. Fury—who is, incidentally, there standing with them, decidedly not dead. Sam retains his status as the normal one in the group.

“Thanks for pulling me out of the river,” he hears Steve tell Natasha.

A strange look passes over Natasha’s face. “I didn’t,” she says. “I figured _you’d_ fished _me_ out.”

Nobody says anything, but everyone knows what it means.

“We’re going after her, aren’t we?” Sam breaks into the silence.

“You don’t have to come,” Steve offers him an out. Surely he’s realised by now that Sam will follow him to the ends of the earth, though; he doesn’t look _that_ surprised when Sam scoffs at the idea of sitting the next adventure out.

“Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you crazy idiots,” he says cheerfully.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him, and it’s a little threatening, but he retaliates with a look that says, _Don’t even start, I know you made out with a brainwashed assassin on an exploding helicarrier while she stabbed you in the shoulder_.

“Probably for the best,” Natasha agrees. “Some of us,” she throws a pointed look at Steve, “still need adult supervision.”

Steve responds with an expression so innocent that Sam bursts out laughing. He loves these crazy motherfuckers.

“When do we start?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've made it all the way here, thanks very much for reading! I'm also working on some ideas for a sequel, if anyone'd be interested in one. I'd probably post it as a second chapter to this story so if you want to subscribe that should let you know if another part does eventuate :)
> 
> I'm also on tumblr as henrymercury, so come say hey.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Waking Up.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4090912) by [avulle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle)




End file.
